Less than two weeks after Donald Trump was elected, dozens of OBceans and San Diegans rallied against him at the foot of Newport and then marched down the sidewalks chanting, “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!”

This is a common chant these days at anti-Trump protests, yet the inclusion of “KKK” in a chant shouted out in Ocean Beach was not as out of place as it may have seemed, for OB does have its own history of a KKK – or Klan – presence, and the presence of other white supremacists over the years.

And within OB’s well known laid-back character and tolerance for alternative lifestyles – which has allowed artists, musicians, bohemians, gays and lesbians, along with bikers and skin heads, to reside within the dense neighborhoods of the community – there’s also been a fiercely, anti-racist attitude among the more liberal and radical residents, at least since the late 1960s.

All summer the OB Rag has been collecting memories of those who lived through the 1967 “Summer of Love” in Ocean Beach and San Diego – asking our readers to send us their experiences so we can share them.

And boomers and those younger than boomers but who recall those days have been emailing us and making comments about their memories.

We have published a few but intend to publish many more at the end of August. Many of those who responded didn’t live in OB or San Diego but sent us their recollections of that summer wherever they were.

So, this is the LAST CALL for Summer of Love memories wherever our readers gathered them.

You’ve probably seen Ray Blavatt’s cartoon drawings around town at the local coffee houses, but didn’t know he has been the animator for a special program for adult literacy.

Now, in fact, Ray is part of a team that is a semifinalist in a national adult literacy project called X Prize. He is the team’s animator and has created their titles that have taught over 1 million students.

Ray is part of another team – the team of locals who keep the Ocean Beach Historical Society going. Often working quietly in the background, he provides tech support to the OBHS during their monthly presentations.

The response to Trump’s total moral failure to reckon with what happened in Charlottesville last Saturday prompted an immediate response from citizens all over the country. Over 700 rallies and marches were held in the aftermath, including here in San Diego.

Also in San Diego, the Horton Plaza pavement plaque commemorating the Confederacy was removed–quickly. According to the petition that was circulated yesterday

Barrio Logan’s national landmark, Chicano Park, is sacred space to the multitude of people that visit every year. It is the epicenter of Chicanx art and culture in San Diego and “el ombligo de Aztlán” as poetic wordmaestro alurista once wrote.

After the white supremacist terror in Charlottesville, Virginia I thought about what I would do if nazis and white supremacists decided to hold a rally in Chicano Park, steps away from my home.

Attacks by white supremacists and right wing groups are not something new to Chicano Park. The Minutemen tried to protest Chicano Park Day and cowered behind a police line, having to be escorted to their cars.

100 Years Before Lexington and Concord, Bacon’s Armed Rebellion of Whites and Blacks Forced Plantation Elite to Create System of Racial Slavery

Originally published Feb. 27, 2015

By Frank Gormlie

Since the turmoil last year in Ferguson, Missouri, swept in a new civil rights movement, once again America is faced with the reality of its system of institutionalized racism. For Americans with conscience, understanding this system is key to changing it, and it cannot be understood without understanding its origins which trail back, of course, to colonial America.

Confronting a system that predates the very formation of the Republic itself

Two dozen people crowded into the OB Green Center on Voltaire last night, August 15th, to discuss organizing a group opposed to Target Express coming into Ocean Beach.

Their discussion began with the reasons they’re opposed to the mega-corporation opening up on Newport Avenue, familiar themes expressed by OB residents and businesses ever since the community heard the owners of the Antique Mall were leasing their huge building to Target.

Both 2016 and 2017 will be remembered as years of contrast in the way the United States approached its public seas, an ocean frontier that like our 19th century western frontier has been ruthlessly exploited but remains an essential element of who we are as a people and what we might yet achieve.

SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. made billions off your captivity and children born into it. But they never did right by you, in funding the design, construction and maintenance of a seapen retirement sanctuary where you could once more feel the ocean, and share it with your children.

This is the same Kasatka featured in the OB Rag’s 2014 series of the ten orcas held in captivity by SeaWorld, COME INSIDE FOR MORE.

Activists at the Ocean Beach Green Center are hosting a meeting to formalize an opposition group to Target Express moving into OB – which will be held tonight, Tuesday, August 15th at 7:00 p.m. The Green Center is located at 4843B Voltaire Street.

People gathered in roughly 700 locations around the U.S. over the weekend in response to violence in Charlottesville instigated by right wing extremists on August 12. Activist Heather Heyer died, and 19 others were injured in an act of terrorism perpetrated by a young Nazi sympathizer. Virginia State troopers H. Jay Cullen and Berke Bates died in a helicopter crash as the day came to a close.

The OB Planning Board has a sub-committee – the Project Review Committee – which does a preliminary assessment of development projects that come before the full Board. And this Committee’s agenda is quite full for Wednesday’s meeting, August 16th. They meet at the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica at 6pm.

The following projects are before the Review Committee:

4719 Bermuda

4950-4956 Saratoga

4820 Point Loma Avenue – Note: the Boulton Bluff Repair will not be presented on the August agenda. The developer for the project has notified OB planners they are in a response period to city review comments and will be completing additional geotechnical materials, so they decided it was a bit premature to present.

In my quest to try almost all of the restaurants in the Ocean Beach and Point Loma area that I have never tried before, I asked my friends Jim and Marilyn if they would like to join me for this review of Flavors of Mayura. I knew that they liked Indian food because I had introduced them to another Indian restaurant on Midway Drive. I was happy when they said yes.

We live in a world of profound beauty and horror. One can turn on the news and view famine, war, and terror attacks and then stroll down the street to the park and revel in a glorious summer day.

Of course, it must be said that this is evidence of our privilege as citizens of the first world nation where we live in relative comfort compared to our fellow humans and across the globe, millions of whom don’t have enough to eat or have been forced to flee their homes due to circumstances beyond their control.

Important Meeting of Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council

By South OB Girl
If you enjoy walking or surfing at Sunset Cliffs — and enjoy the beautiful view — you’re invited to this important meeting of the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council on Tuesday, August 15th, and your attendance and comments would be of value to the future of the Cliffs.

It is clear to one with their ear close to the pavement, opposition to a Target Express store opening on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach is deepening, hardening, and developing.

The opposition campaign thus far has consisted of a “No Target” T-shirt, a petition against the store moving in, and a large, boisterous show-down of opponents at the last OB Planning Board meeting with the property owners and Target representatives, with plenty of TV stations interviewing OBceans on the street.

Local cannabis attorney charged in the MedWest raid, Jessica McElfresh will be in court on Friday, August 11. The hearing is required in order to set search parameters in the prosecutor’s examination of Jessica’s documents and devices.

The devices were seized earlier this year when a warrant was served on Jessica’s law office and home. At that time, charges of conspiracy and a host of cannabis related criminal charges were filed against Jessica and several MedWest employees including the president of the organization, James Slatic.

SeaWorld San Diego said it will begin building a new roller coaster immediately after the plans were approved Wednesday by the California Coastal Commission. “Electric Eel, featuring astounding loops, twists and airtime, will bring a whole new level of excitement to SeaWorld,” SeaWorld San Diego spokesperson David Koontz said.

Tough subjects seem always to end up with Greek or Latin roots. Alienation, bulimia, catastrophe, depression … just go through the alphabet and you’ll find them.

In our fragile democracies, maybe we assign concepts like these, wrestled over by so many psychoanalysts, social and clinical psychologists, political scientists, sociologists, historians, writers for large daily newspapers — even some politicians — that they’ve become contorted and distorted to the point that they are merely suggestive, symbolic, abstracted from the particular.

The California Assembly will be considering legislation in just a few weeks holding drug makers accountable by demanding greater transparency in decisions leading to price increases. It’s a small, but necessary, step toward making health care more affordable, so pay attention when you hear about Senate Bill 17.

America’s Other Drug Problem, namely consumers all-too-often being gouged on the price of prescription drugs, has proven to be a tough nut to crack. “Everybody knows” drug prices are ridiculously high. Other developed nations average 41% of U.S. net drug prices (for the 15 companies marketing the 20 top-selling drugs).

It’s true, I do remember exactly where I was when Richard Nixon came on the tube and announced he was resigning the presidency. It was August 8th, 1974, 43 years ago exactly, and I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant having dinner in the little town of Isla Vista – right outside the campus of UC Santa Barbara. I was in the midst of driving down the coast from the Bay Area, returning to my home on Cape May Avenue in OB.

An announcer came on the TV above us, which was clamped to the wall. Something about “… an important message from the President of the United States … directly from the White House.”

My attention immediately was jolted and while I stared at the black and white, Nixon came on and after his brief introductory remarks, he announced he was resigning effective noon the following day.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board finalized a wastewater discharge permit for the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant to protect ocean water quality and increase water reuse, it was announced Monday.

What this means is the permit will allow San Diego’s system to “divert up to 83 million gallons of Point Loma wastewater per day from ocean discharges. That water will be purified and sent to local reservoirs. By 2035, the Pure Water program is expected to generate one-third of the potable water supply needed for San Diego and surrounding communities.”

I’ve been driving my electric car (aka EV for electric vehicle) for a little shy of a year now. While I love it (I even bought a second one), I realize they’re not for everybody. Below are some reasons you might hate an EV:

You love gas stations: The ritual, the delay in getting home, to work, or that trip out of town; and the drama of rising and falling gas prices.

The inactions of the San Diego Sheriffs Department at the July 2nd Impeachment March outside the County Administration Building will be discussed during the upcoming Community Law Enforcement Review Board meeting on August 8th.

… Sheriff’s Deputies initially stood by idly and watched as members of the ‘Proud Boys’ disrupted, threatened and harassed attendees and speakers.

Several members of the Impeachment March SD planning group (and others) have been meeting on a weekly basis to address the concerns regarding the Sheriff Department’s response to the “Proud Boys’” aggressive behavior and attempts to incite violence at our July 2nd event. Former Assemblywoman Lori Saldana has been part of this effort.

It’s not always pretty when the public gets a chance to voice its opinion, but it is democratic. Recently, I attended the Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD) and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) school board meetings. It was reminiscent of Dicken’s depiction of Paris and London.

Sweetwater, which has been living a nightmare for most of the previous decade, was like being at camp sitting around a bonfire singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.” It wasn’t quite “Kumbaya,” but it was close.

Dozens of folks crowded into Kilowatt Brewery last Thursday night, Aug. 3, to join the brewpub owners, Stones, Rachel and Adam along with Paul and Lynne Bolton, co-sponsors of a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love.

Man Rescued Off Sunset Cliffs

Mixte Communications Part of Free Food Movement

OB Historical Society Presents

Calendar EventsFor more calendar events for August for progressives, go here.

Not so long ago, I met a man at the Point Loma Living Room for a first date. The thought went through my mind at that time that I wondered how the place had stayed in business; it was dirty; drab looking; and just didn’t have a nice feeling. (Ed. See Judi’s review from 2013) I don’t know if my never seeing him again had anything to do with the place but…..

I had heard that it had been sold recently, so when Irene and I decided to have brunch together I thought it might be interesting to see if it had changed. And I am happy to report that it has changed, and for the better!

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The OB Rag has been initiated to ply the Ocean Beach community and the San Diego scene with news and commentary from a distinctively progressive and grassroots perspective, and to provide a forum for those views. Others with similar views are invited to contribute and participate. More about us...

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